1. Field of The Invention
The present invention relates to mischief preventive automatic (electronic) door locking apparatus and method for use with a keyless entry system in an automotive vehicle, the keyless entry system having a portable, wire-less transmitter by which a remote operation is carried out using push-buttons on the transmitter so as to lock or unlock vehicle doors, in which when any vehicle door is not open after the unlocks of the vehicle doors, the doors are automatically locked.
2. Description of The Background Art
In a previously proposed vehicle automatic door locking apparatus for use with a keyless entry system, to prevent any vehicular door from being left unlocked due to an erroneous operation of a remote controller (also called, the portable, wire-less (radio) transmitter but hereinafter often simply called transmitter), a timer is started to measure a time at the simultaneous time when the unlocks of the vehicle doors caused by the remote operation of the remote controller is carried out. When any vehicular door is not open (all of the doors are closed) within a set time period of the timer, all of the vehicular doors are automatically locked. In this automatic door locking apparatus, after the unlocks of the doors are carried out through the remote operation of the remote controller in order for a user (an authorized operator) of the keyless entry system to try to ride the vehicle (to enter a vehicular passenger compartment) and, with any door left closed; the user of the keyless entry system performs loading and/or unloading operations of a baggage(s) into and/or from a vehicular trunk (trunk compartment), there is often a case such that the doors are automatically locked due to an unintentional (inadvertent) lapse of time set by the timer.
To prevent such an inconvenience as unlock (re-unlock) operations of the vehicular doors carried out again, in another previously proposed automatic locking apparatus for use with the keyless entry system, the vehicle trunk and the vehicle doors are interlocked together. If the trunk is caused to open at a time during a set period of time at an end of which the automatic locks for the vehicular doors are effected after the unlock operation of the doors, the automatic locks of the doors are canceled, i.e., the automatic locks for the vehicular doors are not carried out.
In the latter previously proposed automatic door locking apparatus, the doors would be left unlocked if the user did not ride the vehicle. In addition, if the unlocks of the vehicular doors are carried out after the unlock of the trunk compartment is carried out through the portable, wire-less transmitter (remote controller), the automatic locks for the vehicular doors are not carried out.